Those Eyes

I'm kind of hooked on these close portraits, but I'm always looking

for new ideas. What could/should I have done to improve this?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Dave, You asked what you might have done differently. I think that you have washed out too much of the color and texture from her face. I think some shadows would make it better.

Best wishes,

Pete Kaskan

Hi Dave,

Overall a nice shot and looks like you have a model with lots of potential in the looks dept.

Just a few things that I noticed right off.

Only my 2 cents worth..

The expression on the models face is a bit flat. She's not dreaming, not gazing into the distance... I dunno - just kind of vacant.

She's got killer eyes and from the looks of it flawless skin.. see if you could get her to show a greater range of expression/emotion.

The other things I noticed are..

There are a lot of hairs on the left side that are going haywire. Minor detail I know, but since your in so close they really stand out. It's basically a health and beauty type shot so it's got to be flawless. You could touch 'em out in Phsop or just have the hair person get 'em when you shoot. A quick comb through would set 'em right.

The clumpy mascara isn't working. Like I said she has great eyes and the make-up isn't as clean as it should be.

Get on your make-up person to seperate them if need be.. for the 'lash' look that they are trying to get by adding mascara you might want to have them apply fake ones. The fake ones look better many times - if professionaly applied and trimmed - than the real ones do.

But make sure they're put on by a pro and high quality otherwise they look ultra cheeseball!

Perhaps a bit more modeling on the face, bring out the shape a bit more. The lighting is pair of soft box's?

Anyhow like I said.. only my 2 cents, and I only comment on shots I think are worth a shit. The comments I made are fairly subjective anyhow.. so take them with a grain of salt. ; - )

I fully know all the work you've put into this shot and it shows - nice to see people posting this kind of work! It hasn't gone unappreciated!

I'd dig it if you'd check out my some of my shots and let me know what you think. The links follows...

http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=426888

Keep posting.. and will check out your other work!

cheers,

luc

Ditto the above. More expression, less lighting. Diffusers don't have to be as close as possible, they should be at a distance that creates a known contrast to the medium. The model should be comfortable in the set. You might also work on the color of the skin and hair, check out HUE/Sat and see which colors are present where. If I get a chance, I'll do something with it, do you mind?

Just my 2 cents.

Is this soft focus?

Or a bad scan?

I would like to see the eyes sharp!

otherwise I like it

First off, thanks for the comments. It's all helpfull.

Peter;

It is a little lighter than I was intending, but not as much as you might think. I've been playing around with this sort of high key look. Probably too much Patrick Nagel influence. That being said, the picture is admitedly a little too, I don't know, soft(?) I guess. Part of that comes from the Photoshop process. Something I've started to notice in some of my work.

Lucas;

You're the guy with the amazing bottle and lemon shot. I'll stop by and throw my 2 cents worth for sure. I might have a suggestion on how to do the same shot without having to do the double exposer.

Back to your comments. Bonnie's great, and can connect with the camera in an instant. Makes my job a lot easier. In retrospect you're right about her expression, either a slight hint of a smile, or a slight frown, and I mean slight in either case would have made a world of difference.

They wayward hair is more or less my fault. I've all ready removed a couple that were falling right across her face, but I really should have had the stylist just comb/brush her hair. It was getting late in the day and she was the fourth person I was working on and I just got lazy. No excuse I know, it's just what happened. As for the mascara, this was the first time I had worked with this stylist and I figured that it was just something her and Bonnie had decided on. I'll have to ask her about that, 'cause I noticed that in some of the other shots I did Bonnie almost looks like a cartoon 'cause of the size of her eyes and the odd looking lashes. Now I didn't really pick up on that until I saw the pictures again a few days later. *shrug* Live and learn I guess. I've noticed that I'm still not paying enough attention to the details. Something I'm going to have to get a little more anal about.

To both Lucas and John;

I was going for the softest most diffused shadows that I could get. Then the additional Photoshoping (I'll detail the steps at the end) softens the picture even more. It was a look. I'm not going to give up on it, but it does seem to need some refinement.

John, the colouring is a combination of her slightly coloured, all ready redish hair, a very pale complection and again, a result of the Photoshop work I did.

Pete;

No scan, this is straight from the camera into Photoshop. I'll explain.

The 'Soft Focus' effect is done in a a few simple steps.

1. Make sure that you're starting with a good sharp, well exposed, low contrast image. Do your basic touchups, removing blemishes, stray hairs (heh), lint, etc.

2. Make a copy of that layer.

3. Change the copy from 'normal' to 'soft light' At this point it's going to get kind of contrasty and there might be a slight colour shift.

4. Apply a Gaussian blur to the copied layer. About 20% for a closeup like this. Again, this is going to add to the contrast of the image.

5. Adjust the opaqueness of the copied layer to set exactly how much 'softness' you want.

6. This is a step I think I might have missed and would explain why the eyes seem just the slightest bit soft. Add a mask to the copied layer and with either an airbrush or regular brush (your preference) that's the same size as the puple, place a black spot on each eye. I would suggest that you set your brush to about 20% opacity and just 'paint' over each eye until the original layer from below sharpens up the eyes.

7. Add a levels layer and well, mess around with this until you get back the light and contrast that you want. There are no hard and fast rules here, it's a matter of taste really. If you have a historgram that's way to the left and showing that you have almost all black at this point, I can tell you that you're not going to get a good image. No matter how much you play with it, you're going to have large blotches of flat colour that just aren't going to look good. So, be prepared.

Flatten and save that puppy out.

At least that's what I did to get this picture looking like this. I should upload a small copy of the original for comparison. It might make a bit more sense then.

Again thanks for the comments, John G. if you want to play with the picture, go right ahead, let me see what you come up with.

Later.